Monday, July 14, 2014

Monday Made It FREEBIE!

One thing that has been on my summer to-do list is to streamline the organization of supplies in my classroom so that my students can easily access them and put them away! This year was a whirlwind of adjustments with each passing day. At first, I stored supplies (pencils, crayons, scissors, and glue) in a caddy in the middle of each table. Most of my supplies worked fine this way. However, glue sticks were disappearing like hot cakes! So, I started keeping the glue sticks in one of my cabinets. I would take them out when my kinders needed to use them for a literacy center, or when one of them asked for one for an activity. Although the glue sticks were no longer disappearing, it was a lot of work on the part of me and my classroom aide, and we were constantly interrupted while instructing other students. So, towards the end of the year, I just started leaving one container out for my kinders to get a glue stick from, and then return it when they were finished. This worked great!

My dilemma then turned into finding a cute way to store the glue sticks (and other supplies that were stored in other places around the room) so that any needed supply would be in one spot. I didn't want scissors to be on one table, glue sticks to be on another, and pencils to be on a third. I already had a system for pencils that worked well for me, so I just concentrated on the other supplies.

I bought some small bins from The Dollar Tree (2 for $1!) and a roll of clear tape. Then, I whipped up some cute supply labels. I made sure to include the word and picture so that my kinders knew exactly what supply was stored in what bin.

All I had to do was print, cut, and tape the labels to the bins! It was so simple! I chose put the tape on the outside of the label so that the entire label was covered and it won't get peeled off during the school year. I love how they came out!

Want to grab your own set of classroom supply labels? Click on the picture below to download them for free! (There are 9 labels in all, but I only chose to use 3 for my own classroom.)